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By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

I decided on shades of red for the calligraphy on the envelopes for my Santa cards.

Looking at my Santa cards, I decided I needed to letter my envelopes in reds. I started with a light red and went back in with a darker red. Then I outlined the letters and embellished them a bit. And I added hearts, just because I thought they added just the right amount of additional red that was needed.

Envelopes for my Holiday Cards.

I think they look great. Now to finish addressing them and get them in the mail. A number of them are going overseas, so I hope they arrive in time.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

My Christmas cards this year are a graphic image of Santa made from cut and torn pieces of red, white and tan paper. These are easy to make and would be a fun project to do with children.

My torn paper Santa Christmas cards are waiting to be mailed.

Materials: I used red paper, beige paper and white paper. For the torn white paper, I tried both a printmaking paper (unknown brand from my stash) and 80# Strathmore Aquarius watercolor paper. Both worked well, but I really liked how the soft printmaking paper tore. For my adhesive I used double sided tape, but glue stick would work well. You want an adhesive that isn’t very wet because that would wrinkle the paper. I also used a black marker, a light brown marker and blush makeup. In lieu of blush makeup, a crayon or pastel or chalk would work, possibly a marker.

My torn paper Santa cards look more difficult to make than they are.

Instructions for 5″ by 7″ card:

I used red paper, beige paper and white printmaking paper (light weight watercolor paper would work well too). Text weights are fine for the red and beige papers.

Cut red paper 5″ wide and about 2.5″ high and paste it on the top of the card (I used double stick tape, but glue stick would work as well).

Cut beige paper 5″ wide and about 2.5″ high and paste under the red paper.

Tear a white paper and paste it between the red and beige paper.

For the beard, tear a piece of white paper that is 5″ wide and play around with making it look like a beard. When you are happy with the way it looks, trim the bottom of the paper to where the bottom of the card will be and glue to the card.

Decorate your Santa. Black pen for eyes and mouth. Colored pen for nose. Makeup blush for the cheeks, or use a crayon or marker.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

I purchased Helen Hiebert’s 2017 Twelve Months of Paper Calendar earlier this fall. The first month is December 2016, so it’s really a 13 month calendar along with a paper project for each month including instructions and templates.

In addition to the calendar, I also purchased a custom paper pack which includes paper and materials for each project. I haven’t used my custom paper for my Pop Up Tree yet as I want to play around with different possibilities first.

I made the light green tree first. I just used green copy paper. I used a wrapping paper sample for the green and silver tree. I also put a gold bead on the top and strung gold threat down the inside folds.

I will be demonstrating this Paper Pop Up Tree in my studio at the Ashland Art Center during the First Friday Art Walk this Friday. It’s a fun project, great for adults as well as kids. I will have my calendar there so you can take a look at it and the projects in case you want to purchase one for a gift, or for yourself.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude and sharing for me. Today I count my blessings, of which there are many. Although this past year has been extremely stressful, I have had a great many wonderful experiences and fantastic support from family and friends.

This is a collaboration I did with my mother. She did the Chinese brush painting and I did the calligraphy.

I am so grateful to all of you who read my blog and those who share your comments with me. I feel so blessed to be able to share my paper art with so many people, many of whom I will never meet. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I am grateful for my loving family and friends, near and far, old and new. Thank you ALL for being so supportive of me and of each other. I am truly blessed to have you as part of my life.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

Each week of my online PaperLove E-course has a topic. Week three was “Word” and week 4 was “Book.” It’s been a fun course with lots of history, information, sharing, projects and more.

A little book mobile made with pages from an old book that was falling apart.

Luckily, I’ll have access to the class for six months. I just haven’t had the time to try everything. I spent a lot of time these past two weeks working on a Capital Campaign Fundraiser. Still, I managed to sneak in time to work on a number of the projects.

Close up of my little books. They’re sitting on a page of alphabet writing with a stick dipped in walnut ink. The book pages are quite old and brittle.

The above photo shows some of the books from the book mobile up close. I tore all the pages for the books as well as the covers. The background for this photo is some exploratory alphabet writing. I used a stick and dipped it in walnut ink. It was a bit difficult for me to simply scribble rather than try for good calligraphic form.

Haiku in brush calligraphy.

I wrote some Haikus last week, but didn’t have time to write them in calligraphy. The above photo is one I wrote a number of years ago with a brush on Japanese paper.

Journal with three signatures.

My favorite project was making a journal. A friend had given me a roll of old faux leather, probably vinyl. I cut a piece and used it as my cover. The journal has three signatures that are sewn into the spine of the journal.

Journal with three signatures.

I used an old button off of a dress I had years ago. I sewed it to the cover with silk thread. I used the thread to wrap around the book to keep the journal closed. I think I’ll add beads to the threads on the spine.

Journal with three signatures.

It’s been a fun class. You can read about weeks two and three on the links below.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

While I’m busy getting ready for a local fundraiser, I thought I would share some of my autumn paper wreathes. These are fun to make.

The colors here say “Thanksgiving” to me.

I’ve made three different autumn paper leaves over the years. While I love them all, the one above is my favorite.

Autumn Leaves Paper Wreath

Some time back, I saw a burlap-leaf wreath kit in a catalog. Now I don’t particularly care for burlap, but it got me thinking that it would be fun to make a wreath of my own using paper leaves. I have no idea how big the wreat was in the kit, and I can’t even remember which catalog I saw it in But that’s usually the best way for me to go about a project —with a semi-vague idea of what I want to make. That way I’m on my own and not trying to make something exactly the way someone else did.

I started by cutting a piece of cardboard into a circle. I used a dinner plate as my template.

This was just a fun project where I didn’t worry about using archival materials. Some of the papers are probably archival, but the cardboard I used for the back of the wreath is definitely not. I used one of my dinner plates as a template for the circle. A compass would work as well, but I tend to work with whatever is close at hand when I jump into a project.

Here is how I started my first paper wreath.

For my leaves, I made a template out of card stock. After making a shape I liked, I cut it out of the card stock. The template is the shape of half a leaf, so I would cut out a piece of paper 1 and 1/2″ wide and 3 and 1/2″ long, fold it in half, trace around my leaf template in pencil then cut it out. Do you have any idea how many leaves I had to make? Cutting out all those leaves took a lot of time. But, I love the result. I used PVA as my glue because it was nearest to me, but just about any craft glue would work. You could even use a glue gun.

This was my first Autumn Leaves Paper Wreath.

My first wreath came out fairly well, but it turned out that I hadn’t alligned the leaves as well as I could have. To solve that problem on my second wreath, I drew concentric circles about 1″ apart and lot of radius lines so I could make sure my leaves were all pointing towards the center of the circle.

Here you can see the concentric circles I drew on the cardboard to help me line up the leaves.

It kind of looks like a dart board or archery target. I also made my cardboard base a bit larger as I decided I wanted a slightly larger wreath than the first one. Mat board or foam core could also work for the backing of the wreath.

My finished Autumn Paper Leaves Wreath

While it takes a little bit of time to cut out the leaves, I think the result is worth the effort.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

Every Monday I my dad and I would go out to his favorite restaurant for lunch. While we would order different items from the menu, our beverages were always the same. He would order English Breakfast Tea and I would order Green Tea. When I started folding tea bag wrappers early this year, we started saving our tea bag wrappers from our Monday lunches.

Holiday Garland made from tea bag wrappers. They are sewed together with gold thread.

I realized that our tea bag wrappers were red and green, the perfect color combination for the holiday season. I played around with different combinations, all green and all red, but my favorite was the red and green together.

Our tea bag wrappers along with the front and back of the folded rosettes.

My original plan was to make red and green tea bag garlands to decorate my dad’s Christmas tree. I showed him my idea and he loved it. Unfortunately my dad passed away a little over a month ago. I am now making these garlands as a memory of our Monday lunches together.

Close up of the folded rosette.

Each garland has eight 2″ by 2″ squares cut from the front of the tea bag wrapper. You can see how they are folded in the above photo. The pieces are then glued together to make the rosette.

Front and back of the rosettes along with the folded squares ready to become another rosette.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

Today I thought I would share some Christmas envelopes I made for my friend Margie. She had seen the ones I made earlier this year and wanted some made from Christmas wrapping paper.

The papers for these origami envelopes are from a holiday gift paper sample book.

Back in April, during National Letter Writing Month, I made a number of these envelopes using scanned images of my paste papers. I then found I could make them the perfect size for gift cards (the perfect gift for new grads).

Close up of some holiday origami envelopes made from gift wrap sample paper.

Now, using wrapping paper from sample books that were given to me, I made a bunch of holiday origami envelopes.

HINT: It is best to work with quality wrapping paper, not the cheap variety. I found this out the hard way. I started with some cheap wrapping paper a friend gave me, but I didn’t like the way it folded. Luckily my friends at Nimbus, a local Ashland gallery, gifted me some samples of wrapping paper at just the right time. So, get a heavier weight quality wrapping paper to get the best results.

Close up of some holiday origami envelopes made from gift wrap sample paper.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

This past week I’ve been playing with collage in week two of the five week PaperLove E-course that I’m taking. I have never done all that much collage, so that was a bit daunting at first. However, I put my fears aside, and jumped in.

Box made from binders board, then collaged with torn pieces of light green paper with mica flecks.

I shouldn’t have worried, Rachael made it easy. And when I though about it, I realized we do a little bit of collage every time we put a stamp on a letter and mail it. You remember, the old fashioned snail mail? Once I thought of collage that way, it seemed less frightening.

Box made with binders board and covered with collaged torn pieces of paper with blue thread embedded in the paper. Top of box will be made later this week.

Many years ago, I got my mom interested in calligraphy. Then calligraphy got her interested in Chinese Brush Painting. A while back she gave me a big box of her practice papers that she didn’t want to just throw out. I was going through them last week, trying to clear out some space in my garage, and decided they would be perfect materials for collage.

I collaged a piece of paper, then cut it and wrapped it around a container of liquid hand washing gel. It really looks great in my bathroom.

Handmade paper washi paper made from samples of gift wrap I was gifted this past weekend.

On Friday night I did a demonstration of my paper wrapped pencils at Nimbus in Ashland. They had some samples of gift wrap paper and asked me if I would like some. Obviously I said yes and went home and made the above washi tape, one of the exercises in this course.

Box made from binders board, then collaged with torn pieces light green paper with mica flecks.

There has been a lot more instruction going this past week than what I’ve shared here. I was pretty busy this past week and still have a few exercises I need to complete. It’s been a joy to take this class.

By Candy Wooding, 338 contributed posts
View all Candy Wooding's posts.About the author: Though some people call me a 'paper artist' because most of the art that I make uses paper, I like to think of my art as creating memories in time. I commemorate old memories and create new ones. I want my art to touch people at the heart level, the emotional part of their being. The media I use include watercolor, bookbinding, calligraphy, paste papers, paper folding and lots of love. Please see my listing at the Southern Oregon Artists Resource for my complete set of web links and contact information.

I’m so excited to finally have in my hands Helen Hiebert’s 2017 Twelve Months of Paper Calendar. There’s a paper project (along with instructions) for each month of the year. Plus, there’s a bonus month, December 2016!

In addition to the calendar, I also ordered the custom paper pack which includes all the materials to complete the projects. It has papers, beads, bamboo skewers, book board, balsa wood and tea lights. You can see them in the above photo.

12 Months of Paper Calendar by Helen Hiebert.

I’ll be making these projects throughout 2017, so be sure to stay tuned and see how they turn out.